Family of 'Rent' Creator Settles Suit Over Authorship

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In the finale of a long-running legal drama, Lynn M. Thomson, the woman who had claimed partial authorship of the hit show ''Rent,'' has reached an out-of-court settlement with the estate of the musical's late creator, Jonathan Larson, whom she has sued twice.

The agreement includes a undisclosed amount of money and a credit for Ms. Thomson as dramaturge on the title page of the ''Rent'' playbill, lawyers for both parties said. The settlement was first reported in yesterday's New York Post.

Russell Smith, a lawyer for Ms. Thomson, said the terms of the agreement prohibited him from divulging precise details but added that the Post's report of a payment of several hundred thousand dollars was ''inaccurate.''

''All the issues have been resolved to her satisfaction,'' said Mr. Smith. ''The purpose of all of this was not to gloat but to achieve justice. We feel we've done that.''

Peter Parcher, lawyer for Mr. Larson's estate, characterized the agreement differently, as a voluntary act of generousity spurred by the Larson family's desire to put to rest the legal battle. ''It was them saying, 'Let's be gracious, and get out of here,''' he said.

Whatever the terms, both sides said the settlement apparently brings to an end an acrimonious two-year struggle over authorship of the hit musical, which chronicles the AIDS-shadowed lives of group of artists and squatters on the Lower East Side. The show, which had its premiere at the New York Theater Workshop in early 1996, transferred to Broadway a year later and is still playing to sold-out houses. In addition to the New York production and two North American tours, ''Rent'' has been produced in London and will open soon in Australia, Japan, and Finland. Mr. Larson, 35, died of a heart aneurysm the night after the show's 1996 opening.

In November 1996, Ms. Thomson sued in Federal Court in Manhattan for recognition and a share of profits from the show, which court papers said might amount to some $250 million over the years. A year later, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that while Ms. Thomson had contributed some copyrightable material to the musical, she could not claim authorship, or by extent, any author's royalities. That judgment was later upheld by an appeals court.

But in June, Ms. Thomson filed another civil suit against a raft of defendants associated with the show seeking to halt the use of the limited amounts of copyrightable material the court had validated. If Ms. Thomsen prevailed, the producers could have been required to remove lines from the script.

The cases have raised issues in the theatrical community about the ill-defined position of the dramaturge, whose duties can run from giving notes to actors to full-scale restructuring of scripts. Ms. Thomson claimed to have produced up to a quarter of the musical's book, or dialogue, and about 10 percent of its music.

Ms. Thomson, who was paid $2,000 for her work, did not return calls to her home for comment.

While Mr. Parcher, the Larson family lawyer, admitted that Ms. Thomson had had some imput, he rejected Ms. Thomson's estimation of her impact on the script.

''Lynn Thomson is not the author or co-author of ''Rent,''' he said. ''She was helpful, but Jonathan Larson wrote ''Rent.'''